Because your post made absolutely no sense. It was a collection of letters. It didn't even make sense as broken english.

von helmet why r u mean 2 me

Second this! If it is such a great game, where's the DEMO?!??

Shut up.

if its defent why u buy it nobody forcd u tit hin kj u brought upopn yourself oh my god i am crying why do u do this to me awhyyyyyyyyyyy

This is a manufacturing defect. I find it annoying as hell, but yes it is fairly common. Companies such as Dell actually have standing policies not to allow warranty replacement for an LCD screen unless there are 5 or more dead pixels clustered within a 1 inch area of the screen.

Damn, remind me never to buy a LCD monitor from companies such as Dell. If that policy is not listed on their website and they refuse to replace the monitor.. I would take action. The Better Business Bureau has helped significantly with several issues I had over the past few years. A manufacturing defect is a manufacturing defect...

This is a manufacturing defect. I find it annoying as hell, but yes it is fairly common. Companies such as Dell actually have standing policies not to allow warranty replacement for an LCD screen unless there are 5 or more dead pixels clustered within a 1 inch area of the screen.

There is no way to fix this kind of defect, you either have to live with it or get a new screen.

As far as I know that's rubbish, but I'm not the world's biggest authority on LCD screens... My LCD screen sure has never had such a problem though.

#50, Anachronox is actually a LOT better than the demo makes it appear to be, and I've seen it on sale for under 20 bucks. Well worth it
And note that I'm not saying that such an approach (As I outlaid below) will automatically guarantee GREAT games. Just that it will guarantee development cycles that are still affordable.
Remember, we're not in a business like Hollywood, where a movie cashes in several hundreds of millions of dollars. A game that grosses 10 million dollars is considered an absolute gem..

Creston

This comment was edited on Jan 5, 15:14.

Once again, I'm sorry to use Blue's News as a tech support forum, but I need some help. My 18 inch flat panel digital monitor has a red pixel. This pixel is always off color, and most of the time is red. The maker said this is normal and that all LCD monitors have 1-3 dots of off color. Is this true?

Mike

Anyone remember someone who was "gonna make you mah bitch"?
Romero licensed the engine, had a decent team and look what they put out? Daikatana.. ick, but Anachronix (whoever it's spelled)was actually quite enjoyable from the demo but not enough to get my money.

Companies like Raven save alot of money by using someone else's engine by not having to spend the time/money into building one from scratch. This is typically the longest part of game development. Plus Raven just makes damn good games.

This is why it surprised me when Valve decided to use a from scratch engine. It's not like Sierra isn't hurting enough for money as is, but they are offering the resources to build a new engine as well?

After playing Rainbow Six 3 on the Unreal engine you can keep your new fangled engine, I already like what I see elsewhere.

As for physics.. UT 2k3 shows how cool the Karma engine works with the Unreal engine, as well does the R6 3 engine.

Very good point Gog, it would seem likely that that's the way game development will go.

Either that, or we'll start getting games with 2 hours of gameplay and 5 levels...

(Hope I haven't given any developers out there an idea...)

Creston

Still, even with that, eventually they are going to come up against a ceiling I think.

Concerning that ceiling you were discussing, haven't the hardware folks (nVidia and ATi) taken note of increased development times due to all the work has to be done in games and thats the point for their development of CG and Rendermonkey?

True, the amount of work that has to be put into games is constantly increasing but its up to software companies to implement tools that take over some of the work that programmers used to have to do. Look at the latest Unreal engine... now you can directly export objects from Rendering progies, and 3D Studio max which is currently working on some similiar program for game developers.

I took a link to some text from someone at Valve a long while back. Sometime last year. It was either from here or PHL, I'm not for certain. Also, I should have said 'mostly original', the Havok engine slipped my mind.

[edit]

Almost forgot. Yes, it was said to be for HL2 and TF2. I believe I saw mention of CS2 being done on it also, but I'd have to dig up the article to be for certain.

[editedit]

Go go Google.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/7313/
This comment was edited on Jan 4, 03:41.

If you recall that interview with Warren Spector a few days ago, you might recall him saying something to the extent of "A game developer's biggest challenge nowadays is utilizing all the hardware that's available, and not exceeding the budget and development time."

That's not a quote, but it went something along those lines. With processors now already passing the 3Ghz mark, and graphics cards capable of doing jawdropping stuff, a developer either chooses to do all the work themselves, and thereby running a 14 year development cycle (Duke Nukem Forever?) which costs 10+ million dollars (which is almost impossible to recoup), or by licensing engines for whatever they need in their game.

It wouldn't surprise me to see a few companies just doing engines in say 3-5 years time, and everybody else just licensing those engines and making games with them.

Still, even with that, eventually they are going to come up against a ceiling I think. Gamers keep asking for more gameplay, better graphics, more weapons, more special moves, better storylines, better sound, more levels, more voiceovers etc, but still expect the price of those games to be 50 dollars or less.
I know that I felt quite surprised when I saw NWN was 55 bucks...

That trend can't go on, can it? Eventually it has to give out somewhere. ID software can afford to spend whatever amount of money on their new Doom 3 game because they know they will recoup their money by licensing the engine, but how does a Raven Software, for example, keep increasing everything without eventually coming to that point where sales will no longer recoup their costs? (Licensing is ofcourse an option, but I think even that will eventually not cut it anymore)

Quite curious what people think of this matter

Creston

Hey, no problem, Chance. I've noticed the same thing. Then again, seeing the results and realism of the engines, especially Havok's....it's no wonder. I saw that video that was shown of Deus Ex II at E3 last year...it showed that it's the smaller objects that are harder to apply accurate physics too. And watching that burning trashcan being jostled about signified they had a good investment with the physics engine.

Thanks Glas. Couldn't for the life of me remember the name of it. Between them and the Mathengine (Karma) people it seems like many developers are going the same route (licensing) for physics that they go for rendering / graphics. The exception being ID apparently.

Same physic's engine that's being used in Deus Ex II and Thief 3, licensed from a company called Havok.

This comment was edited on Jan 4, 00:04.

Interesting, where did you see the bit on the engine Fungu? And is it for TF2, or HL2, or both? Endless room for speculation here. As for the engine, I suspect not entirely from scratch. They licensed the a physics engine (can not remember which for the life of me...) over a year ago IIRC. Don't think it was the Karma engine... anybody remember that?

According to DXDIAG the release is all marked 'Final Retail' - I've been using it since it was released without any hitches at all, although I don't think there is anything out at all yet that 'needs' it. I upgraded cos I tend to use the latest drivers of everything and to hell with the risk

Although not sure what the whole 'online security' side of DX9 is supposed to be ? not seen any information on that, anyone got any ideas ?

"The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering - Bruce Lee"

Microsoft inst saying Dx9 is a beta anymore. They're acting like its the real thing. Is it safe to download yet?

Mike